Turmoil leaves Aquino bruised and battered

Press, 23 September 1987, Page 10

Turmoil leaves Aquino bruised and battered

By

PHILLIP MELCHIOR

of Reuters Manila

Bruised and battered by political turmoil, Corazon Aquino remains secure as President of the Philippines, but political analysts say her problems are likely to get worse.

The last five weeks have put the 54-year-old President through a political wringer.

“But what we’ve learned is that she is tougher than we thought and she can take more punishment than many expected,” a senior Western diplomat said. In a month of unending crisis President Aquino has faced: • The most serious attempted military coup of her 18 months in office.

• A crippling show of industrial muscle from the militant Left.

• The dropping under military and business pressure of two of her most trusted advisers. • Political murder last week-end of a prominent Leftist leader which has revived pressure for martial law.

Through all this, the swelling Communist insurgency has provided a continuing backdrop. The grim litany prompted a commentator, Amando Doronila, to declare in the respected “Manila Chronicle,” “The nation today is closer to civil war than it was in 1972." That was when the exiled former President, Ferdinand Marcos, entrenched his own rule by launching almost a decade of martial law.

But diplomats and political analysts polled by Reuters said they did not expect the country to tip

over the edge. “When you look out over the long-term there is real reason for gut unease,” one independent analyst said. “But the woman has a remarkable capacity to pull herself out of a hole and when you look back, she has always ridden through these crises.”

“She’s not teetering,” the American Secretary of State, George Shultz, said on television this week, again underlining the massive public and private support Washington has given President Aquino since the August 28 rebellion almost toppled her Administration. Few analysts will completely discount the possibility of assassination or a successful coup ending the Presidency that began in February, 1986, in a

blaze of post-Marcos optimism.

They say, however, that Monday’s reshuffle of top military posts has consolidated key Army officers round her. “She can ride out the crises and the halfhearted rebellions. She’s clearly determined to govern, and she’s certainly not going to resign,” a senior diplomat said.

“Take away the hype and the publicity and the sniping, and in terms of practical politics, there simply is no operational alternative,” he said.

Never easy, President Aquino’s job appears only to be getting more difficult, fulfilling the prophecy made by her assassinated husband Benigno that succeeding Marcos would be a political deathtrap.